


the space between the things you know (is blurring nonetheless)

by patriciaselina



Series: Second-Person Synthesis [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Heavily narrative style, No Dialogue, Second-Person POV, Spoilers 'till Reichenbach, The author is still a very wordy young lass, Vague insinuations of past suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-12-05 02:20:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/717742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patriciaselina/pseuds/patriciaselina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is John Watson. You used to be a doctor, you used to be a soldier, you write a blog, trudge through work, go on dates and pay the bills. Your life was nothing but boring monochrome until you met him, and you know that the moment he leaves everything will fade to black once more. (Also: you have never laid eyes on a book entitled The Four Loves, and so the signs, when they appear, do not jump at you like they seemed to do him.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the space between the things you know (is blurring nonetheless)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [and the words you want are out of reach (but they’ve never been so loud)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/714463) by [patriciaselina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/patriciaselina/pseuds/patriciaselina). 



* * *

There never really is a clear distinction between a moment with Sherlock and a moment without him; this is a realization that dawns upon you only now.

Like you keep telling your silly (yes, silly, a very _silly_ man indeed) flat mate, there really is something to be said about timing. You like to consider yourself a smart man – well, not as smart as _him_ , of course, but he’s different, light years away from everyone else – and so you probably should have seen this coming, should probably not have been surprised at all.

Each and every time you leave, you tell him that you need to get out, ‘get some air’. As if being in the flat with him was boring, ordinary, straight-out _stifling_. As if being with him was suffocating and you needed to leave him to his own devices, because being with him was like drowning, like forgetting how to breathe and choking on your own tongue.

Well, in a way, it _was_. The bloke’s definitely got more than enough ego to suffocate you both, you muse idly, with no small amount of amusement. His idyllic habit of leaving his chemicals and experiments and who-knows-what around definitely isn’t a treat to your respiratory system, either. And being with him was like forgetting to breathe, like forgetting how to eat and drink and work and sleep, like forgetting everything else that wasn’t his excited gait or his insistences or the way his very pale eyes shone when he figured things out, like an absolutely _adorable_ little child on Christmas Day –

A _hem_.

Not that you’ve been looking at him in the way that _everyone_ seems to expect you to do so, of course. No, no, no, absolutely _not_. Well, you’ve clearly got _eyes_ , you could at least peruse the physical aesthetic appeal, and he obviously isn’t as much of a jerk as he makes himself out to be, but you are _not_ interested in him that way. Your relationship is complicated enough as it is without everyone else having to pitch in their two cents’ worth, thank you and _goodbye_ , strangers.

It’s actually not complicated in the sense that everyone implies when they go on those popular social media websites, but the Sherlock-and-John dynamic is complicated in the sense that you go and get yourselves in heaps of trouble on a regular basis, and that every day you are compelled to research complicated cleaning techniques to remove the stench left behind by a severed head in the fridge. There’s also the part where, if anyone else was to be believed, you are living in a flat with an sociopathic, emotionless consulting detective, but if your opinion was to be counted, that is not a problem. That is not a problem at all.

That is not your problem at all because – surprise, surprise, certain police officers who shall remain unnamed! – Sherlock Holmes _does_ have emotions. You know he has them, despite what seems to be his best efforts to show you how true the contrary is. It’s all right, of course. Even the best of actors had the little kinks in their armor, after all.

See, this is exactly what you mean. You admit somewhat grudgingly to yourself that there is no such thing as a moment without Sherlock, now. When he’s there, he’s there, and when you go out for ‘some air’, urge yourself to leave his side, he’s _still_ there. He is always right at the edge of your thoughts, just like how he is in real life – standing around, waiting for the slightest of encouragements to start regaling your brain with yet another one of his trademark spiels of random facts and deduction.

You can almost swear that his special kind of people-watching has begun to rub off on you – mostly on the most inopportune of moments, at that! It should actually worry you, how you read too much into the things your date’s clothes and fingernails say more than the things you are supposed to be hearing from the words she is currently, _actually_ , saying. But rather, this serves as sort of a comfort to you, a reassurance, almost alarmingly enough.

But this actually isn’t that much of a surprise to you: if you were to be honest to yourself, these little trips have not been giving you a ‘bit of fresh air’. Not at all, it will never work. It’s because, unbeknownst to everyone else, it’s actually the opposite that holds true for you – it’s doing ordinary things with ordinary people that suffocate you, it is acting normal and smiling along as if you understand their predicament completely that stifle you.

You are John Watson, ex-army doctor and erstwhile assistant to the world’s only consulting detective, and you know that you are at your best when Sherlock Holmes is at your side.

So it’s a lie when you tell him otherwise, each and every time. The thing is, you’ve never really wondered why he _never_ seems to pick up on your insincerity.

* * *

 

Once upon a time, family was a very important thing for you. You have been born and raised to always be a nice boy, the perfect son and brother. There’s no such thing as perfect, of course you know that, but you’ve always cut extremely close to being so. You know you love them with all your heart and then some, it was only proper, after all.

And, just like in every other family, you grew up, and you grew apart. There really is no catalyst in question – you could argue that it was Harry’s insistent drinking that threw you off the brink, but even that is but a flimsy alibi to explain away why you drove her away so heartlessly, so _easily_ – but it just happened, plain and simple. Suddenly you can’t help but forget the last time you’ve seen them, and their faces begin to blur into incoherent inconsistency when you close your eyes.

Still, you know exactly what they mean when they talk of someone ‘liking someone like a brother’. It doesn’t prepare you for anything quite like _this_ , however.

It’s an ordinary day when you meet, nothing of interest, really. You are the kind of person with a life more boring that watching paint peel and you know this very well. No hobbies, no interests, no connections or rhymes or reasons left, and sometimes you just think of holding _it_ up to your head – dark metal glorious, cold and heavy against the fragile skin of your temples – and let everything else burst away in a flurry of blood and broken heartbeats.

You are admittedly one for florid expression, but even you won’t go as far as to say that everything made sense when you first laid eyes on him. Sherlock Holmes, and everything else about him, had _never_ been that easy. And besides, he did not even seem to notice your existence until you held out your mobile – you cannot help but wonder, _what would have happened had you not held out your hand?_

In what seemed to be a matter of mere minutes he had already filed you away in his mind under the title of ‘new flat mate’, and had already breezed through half your life story by merely glancing at you. He was interesting, even then, and you already knew that getting to know this strange man would be a tremendous risk, but it was a risk you took to heart.

Come to think of it, he had been very much like you, in a way. Between the psychosomatic limp and the sudden trauma and deportation, you were also quickly becoming bored with the world in general. Not that you’d tell him this, of course – but who’s to say he didn’t _already_ know?

He had known you for little over a day, but he had already pulled out all the stops. You remember that rare look of genuine worry on his face as he picked at his things, fussing over which reorganizations would please you, and you would’ve laughed had he not looked so scared and serious. He had brought you to a crime scene – admittedly the kind of thing he saw excruciatingly fun indeed – brought you out to eat, even! In the span of those few hours he had apparently deemed you some kind of close relation, and you cannot ascertain for the life of you as to why.

There was a smile on his face when you were leaning side-by-side, breathlessly against the wall, laughing with reckless abandon, and it was most probably that very moment when you realized that come hell or high water, you will stay with him.

After all, sociopath or no, he is _your_ consulting detective, with the attention span of a damned toddler, and he needs to have someone take care of him, you muse with no meager amount of glee.

 **_στοργή_ ** _, storge,  is fondness through familiarity ( a brotherly love ), especially between family members or people who have otherwise found themselves together by chance._

_It is described as the most natural, emotive, and widely diffused of loves: natural in that it is present without coercion; emotive because it is the result of fondness due to familiarity; and most widely diffused because it pays the least attention to those characteristics deemed “valuable” or worthy of love and, as a result, is able to transcend most discriminating factors._

* * *

 

You’ve always thought that friendship was a kind of social nicety that you had to play along with in order to be considered as playing the same tune as everyone else. So you make friends, chat them up, maybe get a pint or two, exchange hellos and goodbyes and polite conversation. It’s exactly just like what those kids these days say on the Internet – _I tried, and therefore nobody could judge me_. More or less, this is what you do.

For all your insistence that friends are important, you yourself never really had the thought to put much slack in that sentiment. You can hide away with your excuses, behind the facts that most of the men you call friends are fighting for their lives in a war not their own (the same war you should still be in, _damn it_ ), that Stamford is busy, that everyone else has lives they’d prefer to go on with without you. But that’s all that they are – excuses, plain and simple, more proof that you aren’t as infallible as you think you are, after all.

What is it, then, that drew you to him like this? You frankly have no idea, and you think you never will understand precisely why – which is kind of the expected result for anyone trying to make heads and tails of Sherlock Holmes. But what you do know is that as he found himself inexplicably…for lack of a better word, _fond_ , of you, you found yourself drawn in his madness as well.

This is partly the reason why you keep reminding him – _but it’s the solar system!_ If only he understood the rhyme and reason in the glorious sun above and the pull it had on the measly earth below, you think maybe he’d find it easier to understand the pull he had on you.

Frankly, despite what he may tell everyone, you are not the most prosaic of people. Your prose is not always as purple as his favorite shirt when viewed under the bright lights of the London night life.

…well, maybe it _is_. But it’s only been this way with one of your subjects, and only that one alone – you are not much of a writer, but you cannot help but wax poetic when it comes to all that is Sherlock Holmes. There was something that stung oddly within you when he said that nobody had ever appreciated his deductions before you, after all. And from then on you made a silent vow to always remind him that he _is_ brilliant, he _is_ fantastic, he _is_ amazing, and there is this spark that shines so brightly from the ice cold depths of his usually neutral eyes, and it makes everything all worth it.

For all his pestering you and berating you for ‘ _making everything read out like a romance novel’_ , you know that it distresses him to no end, for he cannot for the life of him figure out why you keep writing him out for all the world to see. He thinks that he somehow inadvertently forced you into this, in the same way people are forced by social media to detail their breakfast or their crushes or the many things they do when nobody’s looking. But you know that it never was a coercion, that there never was any doubt that you had _always_ had a choice. That he, he who strides into crime scenes without a care, who berates people for not taking his word as _gospel_ , who wants the world to follow along with him _exactly_ how he wants it to do so, had always given you a choice.

And that your choice had always been him.

 **_φιλία_ ** _, philia,  is the love between friends. Friendship is the strong bond existing between people who share common interest or activity._

_Lewis immediately differentiates Friendship Love from the other Loves. He describes Friendship as, “the least biological, organic, instinctive, gregarious and necessary of our Loves” – our species does not need Friendship in order to reproduce._

_He uses this point to explain that Friendship is exceedingly profound because it is freely chosen._

===

It’s the first time you have ever felt this way, and you sincerely think that it is the knowledge of that which scares you.

This is the same reason why you absolutely _bristle_ at other people’s insinuations – you know not what this is, or what it is supposed to mean, and so you loathe it when people who are _not_ you, who are _not_ him, try their hand at labeling. It’s silly and senseless and instead of talking back you should by all means be handling it as gently and as classily as a proper adult should be, but you just cannot help yourself. There is also the fact that every child who says ‘ _it’s not a crush!_ ’ is quickly replied to with ‘ _yes, yes it is_.’ You know this, grew up with this even, but still you snap back and grit your teeth and take the bait, each and every time, busying yourself with stating your platitudes and disregard all accusations as baseless.

But then again, come to think of it, when it all comes down to the truth, what other word can people use to call this but ‘ _love’_? Even _you_ can say that the fact that all of this was love, at least, is true. For all your wining and dining and romancing, you yourself, John Watson with the habit of breaking ladies’ heart across three continents, have never been in love before, but you do know that this thrumming undercurrent that stains the air when you are with him cannot be anything that is _not_ love.

But this is not the kind of love that everyone thinks of when they lay eyes on you both, no. Maybe it will be, with time, you tell yourself when your imagination escapes your feeble hold on it, but whether or not it transforms is none of your concern. The only thing that matters is that you will be here, in a place where he will be there, and you will be together and everything else doesn’t have to matter as much as they’re supposed to be.

It’s not something so easy, so cut-and-dry as to be called as ‘friends’ or ‘flat mates’ or ‘colleagues’ or ‘lovers’ or ‘boyfriends’ or ‘partners’ or any of those generic terms people keep tossing at you both from all directions, but then again, since when did something where Sherlock Holmes was concerned become cut-and-dry, become _generic_?

There is this look he throws you when you berate somebody for attempting to pin yet another label at the pair of you, and you’re absolutely certain that he has no idea that his face has contorted to such an expression. He keeps looking at you with such unbridled confusion that you stop in your tracks and remind yourself that this is _Sherlock Holmes_ , brightest mind of our generation, who could most probably write out decades of dissertations from the sheer amount of experiments littering the kitchen floor space, who can solve a crime from the print of a heel or a single bullet.

But when it comes to matters like this he looks to you with a face that tells you that, for once, he has absolutely no idea what is going on.

Which is why it destroys you, absolutely _destroys_ you, to see the kind of rack and ruin he goes through those holidays when he thinks Adler dead.

And which is why you, unarmed, unnoticed, abducted on your doorstep in plain sight, absolutely rage at her, beautiful, cunning, the cause of the chink struck in his armor when he wasn’t looking.

You know she’s dangerous, that she brought lesser men to their knees (usually _literally_ ), and that she is the one supposed to be in control here, but it doesn’t stop you from hating her anyway, letting yourself go to that glorious rage – because love or no, she broke his heart, his soul, his belief in his entire being, and that just is _not_ right. That is not supposed to happen.

So when she asks for your help: _No, no, no,_ you think, like a little child with his hands on his ears, _no, I’m not listening!_ Because in the end it doesn’t matter how devastatingly gorgeous she is or how good she may be at committing atrocious acts on your person, what matters is that she hurt your friend, your brother, your _Sherlock_ , and nobody toys with his heartstrings and gets into your good graces, no no _no_.

When she asks you if you are jealous, you snap back at her because really, it isn’t any of her business. It shouldn’t matter to her, this whatever-it-is you have, because it is yours and yours alone, and she has _no right_ to understand it before either of you have a chance to. Nobody has a right to.

Between your uncertainness and his confusion, you know pretty well that trying to understand what kind of a bond this is may take eons. It also may never happen, if Lady Luck hates you, which she seems to have been until recently, when she allowed you both to meet.

But you know that whatever this is, you will muddle through it together, and that alone is more than you’ve ever asked for.

 **_ἔρως_ ** _, eros, is love in the sense of 'being in love' or 'loving' someone._

_Lewis concludes that Eros can become a god to people who fully submit themselves to it. He says that it can be an extremely profound experience for people even up to the point of suicide pacts and furious refusals to part._

* * *

 

He jumps, and you can see the world revert to grayscale before your very eyes.

This is another thing about you, something that he probably deduced out of the way your eyes crinkled or the angle of your posture when he first saw you – before you met Sherlock Holmes, you looked at the world as if it were a black-and-white photo from long ago. This is something in which you were very much like him, in a way, always from the outside looking in, watching the world from an arm’s length and never daring to come closer.

It’s then when he sidles up comfortably beside you, taking your hand and it is when he brings you along that you see the world explode with color and life, it is when you live with him and work with him and _kill_ for him that you feel the thrum of your pulse once more, feel a strange kind of warmth in your heart. Suddenly everything is in Technicolor, suddenly everything makes sense: most of all him, with his blue-gray-green eyes and his large coat and his miscellaneous eccentricities.

He was your muse, in more ways than one, and you find that you don’t especially care if anyone reads into that, because in a way, they would have read right.

Now he is gone, and you’re back at square one where you started, as if you never met him and you are newly invalided home from the war again, still lonely and forgotten by the world at large. But this time hurts even more – because you now _know_ how brilliant the world looks like in color, how satisfying it is to pore over case files for him while he grunts and tunes his violin for the nth time, how beautiful the London streets are when you sprint through them, how gratifying it is to hear him say that he doesn’t have friends, only has _one_ , only ever will have one.

This time, it hurts even more, because you already had everything you always wanted but never asked for, and Lady Luck, remembering just how much she hates you, makes you watch everything you’ve ever loved fall apart in front of your very eyes.

But it doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change that he, annoying little scamp he is, is still the most wonderful person you’ve ever met, that he is the only one who knows you from your toenails to the hairs on your head, that he is the only one whose presence makes you feel, for once, not alone in the world.

The world will call him a fraud and it will call him a fake, it will call him an amateur and it will call him dead, but you? You are John Watson and you will always and forever call him Sherlock Holmes, the best and wisest man you have ever known.

 **_ἀγάπη_ ** _, agapē, is the love that brings forth caring regardless of the circumstance._

_Lewis recognizes this as the greatest of loves._

* * *

 

 

 

**END.**

**Author's Note:**

> …guess that makes this my second foray into Sherlock writing, huh.
> 
> Thank you for reading this far, and…well, this is actually my response to the positive attention the first Sherlock fic I did garnered from all of you! I know perfectly well that I ramble on and on too much and seem to have a vague loathing for actual dialogue, but I shall try my best to do better in the future. Maybe I’ll be able to fall back into writing silly fluff fic, once I get a hold of how best to get a grip on their characters. But seeing as I am testing the waters of this glorious fandom, I’ll have to start out with my autopilot mode – Introspective Angst.
> 
> Title comes from Beside You, by Marianas Trench, just like with the first one. I really like that JohnLock video, as you may have noticed. But ironically, it was not the video I linked to in the first part that inspired me to do this - [it was this video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiRjB98o6yg), which uses one of my most favourite Maroon 5 songs.
> 
> The snippets in italics after each part are from the Wikipedia article for The Four Loves. Yes, they are the exact same ones I used for the first one, which was the Sherlock side of things. They’re supposed to match, but this one is an impromptu piece done because…because my mum got me a copy of season 2 this weekend, and I just had so many feelings. I understand what everyone else feels right now.
> 
> Every part is supposed to kind of match up with the first fic from Sherlock’s POV, but it didn't work out that way. The first part, is set somewhere between the _Banker_ and the _Game_. So the second part is from the _Study_ , the third from the _Game_ , the fourth from _Scandal_ and the fifth, of course, from _Reichenbach_.
> 
> I noticed how different a tone I’m using for our dear doctor, in comparison to how all those other brilliant fics portray him – we have to remember, that for all his intellectual superiority, it is actually Sherlock who is the more emotional of the two. This mainly stems from the fact that Sherlock doesn’t like spending time with most of humanity, and thus has no idea how to pull the reins on his feelings (leaving him to, of course, merely shove them away somewhere and hope no one sees), while John, with his adorable jumpers and easy familiarity, is the one who has grown up in a world that has taught him to hone his emotions considerably. (“ _Nothing I can’t heartlessly abandon_ ”? Really, John, really?)
> 
> The writing of this fic also makes me realize that I should most probably stick to writing from Sherlock’s POV, hee hee. They’re at the core of them very much the same, two very lonely men who don’t fit in with the rest of the boring world, but John is…different, somehow, in a way I cannot translate into mere words. That being said, I am so, so, sorry if this was too out-of-character.


End file.
